1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to the field of computerized searching and more specifically relates to systems and methods for manipulating and displaying data in a user-configurable fashion.
2. Background Art
With the widespread adoption and availability of the Internet, the Internet has become a valuable tool for research, shopping, entertainment, and other activities. Since the Internet now comprises billions of pages of information, it has become increasing difficult to quickly and efficiently search for and locate the desired information. To facilitate access to the information on the Internet, search engines have been developed to sort and display information to users. Most Internet search engines use proprietary algorithms to score and “rank” web pages for presentation to users with the most relevant web pages being ranked “higher” and being presented first. Since most users won't look beyond the first few pages of results for any given search, it is very important to design web pages that will rank high in the search engine results. Many Internet search engines use some form of keyword or key phrase and linking schema to provide targeted search results that are responsive to a user's search request.
Search engine optimization (“SEO”) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's “natural” or un-paid (“organic”) search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users. SEO strategy may include targeting different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.
As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO also considers how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website for SEO purposes may involve identifying relevant keywords and phrases, editing website content to include relevant keywords and phrases, modifying the hypertext markup language (“HTML”) used to create the webpages at the website so as to include relevant keywords and phrases, and the associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.
To assist in identifying and analyzing relevant keywords and phrases, Internet marketing and SEO professionals will frequently use various keyword research tools. A keyword research tool is a software program that takes a starting or “seed” keyword or phrase (e.g., “cheap car insurance”) and, using the seed, returns a list of related keywords and phrases. In general, the results are generally retrieved from a data source specifically developed for this purpose. In many cases, each returned keyword or phrase will also have metrics such as search volume, cost per click, competition level, etc. This information helps the user determine which keywords they want to target for inclusion in search engines searches. These tools generally offer a method for the person to select the words of interest and place them on a shortlist or to remove keywords from consideration if they are not of interest for a specific application.
SEO professionals will often spend a significant amount of time ensuring that their webpages are optimized for the most relevant keywords used in searches so that targeted traffic will be sent to the desired website pages. Entire websites may be designed for specific keyword and phrases, anticipating exactly what keywords and phrases will be used to search for the products or services advertised at the target website. Also, Internet marketers optimize informational webpages on a site with the intention of earning the visitors business at a later time or by generating revenue from advertising. While SEO optimization can increase the probability of higher search engine rankings, there are limits to the effectiveness of the processes and procedures used to identify the best keywords and phrases that will drive traffic to the website.
For example, many people search the Internet for “auto insurance” when they really are looking for “car insurance” as opposed to “truck insurance” or “motorcycle insurance.” An Internet marketing professional would likely want to consider the keywords “auto” and “car” as equivalent. It is common to set synonym equivalencies by manually entering them into the system and letting the algorithm utilize this data. But even in this case there are situations where this will be unlikely to provide the desired results. A pre-configured search phrase such as “auto insurance for two wheel vehicles” may logically be associated with the “motorcycle insurance” category and produce search results targeted towards motorcycle insurance, even though in practice a person may be searching for “moped insurance.” Another potential limitation of keyword grouping theory is the possible desire to include an item in a group although it does not hierarchically fit in that group. For example, a search engine marketer may designate a page to target “car insurance” but a search engine such as Google® not only ranks that page for car insurance related terms but may also rank it very high for “truck insurance deals” even though there is already another page dedicated to “truck insurance” which is not ranking highly for this keyword. The Internet marketer may want to manually assign the keyword to the page that it is currently highly ranking on. Of course those skilled in the art will recognize that the algorithm could be modified to account for this type of variation but there will always be some cases where an algorithm can't account for so manual adjustment will almost always be a functional requirement.
The same is true for groups and not just items. A user may have a reason for manually combining groups that the algorithm did not put together. For example, the algorithm may create two separate groups such as “car insurance for women” and “ladies car insurance.” Manually combining these groups makes sense if the algorithm was not designed to automatically due so.
Since grouping information such as keywords often involves working with large numbers of items at a time (as many as several thousand) allowing the user to quickly and easily manipulate this data is important to promote maximum productivity. Many current tools have cumbersome methods for manually overriding defaults such as requiring the user to click a checkbox next to the item in question, click a menu to select an action, and then click a button to execute that action. Doing this dozens or hundreds of times makes the work burdensome. Many tools that group keywords put the keywords into individual folders making it impossible to view all of the keywords in one grouped list. Most commonly keyword research tools display the results in a single ungrouped list making the process of deciphering and using the results in the decision-making process less than intuitive.
These, and other similar limitations, make the process of identifying and selecting the best keywords to drive Internet traffic less efficient and effective than it might be. Accordingly, without improvements in the current systems, procedures, and methods for working with search engine tools, the ability to effectively and efficiently ensure that Internet marketers and SEO professionals are able to retrieve and display important information such as keywords and phrases will continue to be sub-optimal.